Erotic Author Spotlight Series: Ashe Barker

This week’s erotic author in the spotlight is Ashe Barker who I will have the pleasure of meeting at Smut in the City – Manchester in just a couple of weeks time! Read on to find out more about the lovely Ashe Barker, her writings, and enjoy some free excerpts of her hot erotica too.

Email me at cara@carasutra.co.uk with your info – whether author or blogger – and I will reply with your spotlight date. This will be the next available Monday for authors and the next available Thursday for bloggers.

– Cara Sutra

Biography

Hi, I’m Ashe Barker, and thank you for having me here today!

I’ve been an avid reader of fiction for many years, erotic and other genres. I still love reading, the hotter the better. But now I have a good excuse for my guilty pleasure – research.

I tend to draw on my own experience to lend colour, detail and realism to my plots and characters. An incident here, a chance remark there, a bizarre event or quirky character, any of these can spark a story idea.

When not writing – which is not very often these days – my time is divided between my role as resident taxi driver for my teenage daughter, and caring for a menagerie of dogs, rabbits, tortoises. And a very grumpy cockatiel.

I have seventeen (at the last count) titles on general release, with several more in the pipeline. All my books feature BDSM. I write explicit stories, always hot, but they offer far more than just sizzling sex. I like to read about complex characters, and compelling plots, so that’s what I write too. Strong, demanding Doms are a given, often paired with new submissives who have a lot to learn.

I have a pile of story ideas still to work through, and keep thinking of new ones at the most unlikely moments, so you can expect to see a lot more from me.

Erotic Writing

The Hardest Word is a series featuring Freya, a mute submissive who seeks out a powerful , experienced Dom, Nick Hardisty, to train her. It’s fair to say she has no idea what she is letting herself in for. Freya is a strong, resilient and assertive heroine, a woman who knows what she wants, who she wants, and is not afraid to ask for it. She has had some bad luck in her life, and some incredible good fortune too when she wins over forty million pounds in the Euro lottery. But even this can’t buy her the Dom of her dreams.

Because The Hardest Word trilogy deals with disability, in a BDSM context, it was a challenge to write. I wanted to get Freya’s vulnerability across without making her into a victim, defined by her disability. Nick, too, needed to be harsh and stern, a strong Dom with a gentle inner core, sensitive and intuitive enough to get past Freya’s problems to release her inner submissive. I re-wrote several passages before I arrived at the nuances as I wanted them, but I think the result works.

The Hardest Word deals with a sensitive subject, whilst still being insanely sexy.

Over forty-million pounds in the bank, but the one thing she wants to buy is not for sale.

Freya Stone is a Lottery winner. A Euromillions Lottery winner to be exact. The week she won, hers was the only winning ticket. And it was a rollover, seeing her almost forty-five million pounds richer. But with no taste at all for a wealthy lifestyle, Freya bought herself a flashy car and a fancy apartment, then ran out of ideas and stuck the rest in the bank to be carefully invested by her own private wealth consultant.

One passion her wealth will enable her to indulge, however, is her appetite for submission. Or so she thinks. Following a childhood illness, Freya is unable to speak. She gets by pretty well with a combination of British Sign Language and a notepad, but her lack of speech makes negotiating difficult. She can’t tell a Dom what she needs, and she can’t use safe words. None of the Doms she’s played with so far have been especially interested in training a novice sub who doesn’t even squeal.

So Freya decides to buy tuition from a Master who comes highly recommended. Why not? She has the funds at her disposal, and nothing better she’d like to purchase. Twenty-five thousand pounds for a month with the Dom she’s fantasised about for ages seems like a bargain to her.

But experienced and harsh Dom Nick Hardisty has other ideas. Infuriated at Freya’s attempt to buy his services, he turns her down flat, while also demanding that she pay for her temerity by submitting to a punishment which he will administer personally.

Can Freya accept his discipline? Can she convince him to reconsider and provide the help she needs? And Nick Hardisty drives a hard bargain. If he won’t accept her money, what will his price be?

Reader Advisory: This book contains references to age regression scenes and uncomfortable BDSM encounters. It also includes pain play, spanking, restraints, anal play and nipple clamps.

Trusting still, I do as I’m told. And immediately wish I hadn’t. He quickly secures my left wrist with a strap, then my right. It feels like leather and my arms are held above my head, my hands stretched wide apart. My last means of signalling suddenly withdrawn I start to tug, to struggle in earnest. He’s there again, close, his breath against my ear.

“Be still, Freya, trust me.”

But it’s no good, I’m shaking my head wildly, scared, starting to lose it. He takes my face between his palms, holds my head still and places his mouth on mine.

The effect is instantaneous. His kiss, so unexpected, quiets and calms me, especially as my mouth instinctively opens under his and his tongue slides inside, exploring, tasting, claiming. One hand remaining on my face to hold me in position, he deepens the kiss, at the same time as his other hand slides down my body, across my breasts then farther, to tease the softly curling, neatly trimmed hair between my legs. He trails his hand through that, and between the slick folds. I arch, open my legs to let him in, and he accepts my invitation, plunging one finger deep inside me. Then, and only then, does he lift his head, breaking the kiss but remaining close—I can feel his breath on my face.

My body is moistening, his finger gently sliding in and out, my juices starting to flow in earnest now.

“I’m thinking you like this, little sub. Is that right?”

I nod then drop my head back as he continues to stroke me, adding a second finger to stretch me a little farther.

I shake my head, use my inner muscles to squeeze around him. Desperate, I want him to move, to stroke me, to give me the friction I suddenly require more than oxygen.

“Ah, that feels so good. And when you squeeze around me like that, whether it’s my fingers inside you like now, or my cock later, that’s another signal. That’s you telling me, ‘this is good, I like this, I want more of this’. Yeah? Does that make sense?”

I dip my head in understanding, but he hasn’t finished yet.

“Can you make this sound?” He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, the sort of sound you might use for calling a dog over.

I nod, of course I can make that sound.

“Do it, let me hear it.”

I click for him, and he drops another light kiss onto my mouth. “Not quite without vocal sounds then. That’s your safe signal for this, while your hands are tied. If you need me to stop, or slow down, you click like that. I’ll hear you, and I’ll stop, check with you what you need, what you want to have happen. And if you want to stop, we will. So, are you okay still?”

I can manage a hearty whistle, but I never before considered clicking my tongue as a way of signalling. As I bow my head again, I admire his ingenuity. I’m not sure if he’s making it up as he goes along or if he pre-planned all this, but it seems this inventive Dom has an answer for everything, a way of dealing with all my issues and problems. Angela was spot on in her recommendation. He was the right Dom to ask to train me. He could help me, he already has.

He takes my face between his palms. “I told you, upstairs, that I’d never lay a hand on you unless you had your safe words ready.” His voice is low, sexy, sensual. And very firm as he continues. “You’ll always be able to take back control whenever you want to. But submission, real submission, is when you choose not to, when you let your Dom have the power, and keep it, when you let your Dom do whatever he wants to with you, with your body, because that’s the way you want it. Because it arouses you, excites you, fulfils you, because you want to please your Dom, and you trust him to always take care of you.”

He stops, as though waiting for me to take that in, to assimilate this new thinking, re-align my beliefs and attitudes, my assumptions and pre-conceptions. Then, presumably when he thinks I’ve had enough time to get my head around it, he continues, “So, ready to play?”

The chance of a new life out in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors sounds too good to be true to shy musician Eva Byrne. Stifled and smothered within the cocoon of her brilliant academic career, Eva yearns for something different. Something real and exciting. Something she can feel.

Excitement. Passion. Pleasure. She finds that sexy, enigmatic Nathan Darke can provide all these and more when she moves into his home as violin tutor to his young daughter. But Eva’s sensual encounters with her demanding, domineering new employer quickly evoke her deepest fears, as he introduces her to the trauma of submission and marks her with his particularly dark brand of love.

But will Eva’s natural curiosity and thirst for new experiences be enough to withstand the sting of Nathan Darke’s exquisite touch? Will simple surrender be enough as he challenges her every inhibition, taking her on an erotic journey of self-discovery and liberation?

Reader Advisory: This book contains scenes of dominance and submission, including sex toys, pain play, anal play, nipple clamps, erotic waxing, paddling, restraints and caning. It also involves one scene where miscommunication leads to unintentional loss of consciousness and ends on a cliffhanger that some readers might find upsetting.

He breaks the kiss to start nibbling his way down my neck. As if not finding the angle to his liking, he suddenly, effortlessly lifts me from the chair, turns and lays me down with my bare back flat on the table top. He holds both of my wrists in one hand, pinning them to the table above my head and, standing between my legs, leans over to look down at me, stroking his other hand the length of my body from neck to waist.

“Beautiful… Holy fuck, so lovely,” he murmurs before he leans down to take my right nipple between his lips.

I squeal, the shock jolting through me even though I had sensed what he was about to do. His body weight and his hand around my wrists hold me in place as he continues his work. The sensation is everywhere, starting at my nipple, which is now painfully engorged. The tingling pulses radiate out through my whole body, connecting as if by some sort of internal electric current to that spot between my legs, which is now drenched. It feels exquisite, acute, intense, forbidden and overwhelming. I arch my back, pushing my breasts towards his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, this source of ecstatic pleasure.

One or two ill-fated fumblings from other students when I was a teenager at university did nothing to prepare me for this. I have never, ever felt anything remotely like this before. I might have read about it, known the theoretical possibility was out there, somewhere. Happening to other women—women who were attractive and had lush, sexy bodies and soft, wavy hair. But this is here, now, happening to me.

I feel the hard table beneath my shoulder blades as I writhe under his skilled lips, his expert tongue and teeth, desperate for more. And he knows what he is about—he knows what I need and he has more for me. Opening his mouth wider, he takes more of my breast in and sucks hard, first one side then the other. He slides his free hand, palm up, between my shoulders and the table to raise me up, giving him easier access with his mouth, his tongue, his teeth. Gently grazing my now helplessly sensitised nipples with his teeth, he suckles me relentlessly, nipping slightly harder, just enough to hurt, maybe—I’m not sure where pain ends and pleasure begins now. What does it matter, anyway? He can do whatever he wants to me as long as he doesn’t stop.

He is no longer holding my wrists—he has no need to because I’m lying boneless under him, spread across his kitchen table, pleading wordlessly for…for what? More? Less? The ecstatic pleasure tinged with a hint of pain is so intense now that I can only moan, ride the waves of sensation pulsing from my breasts out through my fingers and toes, each wave bigger, heavier, more compelling than the one before until I am writhing with need.

“Yes, you can, you are. Don’t fight it, sweetheart, come for me. Now. Come now.” His words—insistent, soft and low, seductive—are breathed into my ear before he returns to my breasts, nibbling and sucking mercilessly, building the tension, increasing the sensations coursing through every part of me, winding me tighter and tighter until I burst, screaming out loud as fireworks explode in my head, my groin, everywhere as the earth shifts beneath me. My inner core clenches violently, the wetness surely flooding across the table. I feel I am falling, floating as the tension is released and I hear myself moan in delighted satisfaction, drifting back down towards reality.

Me, the girl who can’t bear to be touched. Somehow—God only knows how it happened—I have just spent the last ten minutes spread out half naked on Nathan Darke’s kitchen table, his hands and mouth all over me until I totally lost control, and he watched me thrashing about in the throes of my very first orgasm, right in front of him. Christ! How wonderful, how intimate. How unlike me. And he’s achieved all this without so much as a button of his coming undone.

Raising his head to look into my eyes, which I’m sure must be still glazed from the enormity of what has just happened to me, he smiles tenderly, if that’s possible. He drops a light kiss on my lips, then stands and, still holding my gaze, he lifts the hem of my miniskirt to slide his left hand underneath, bracing his right hand flat on the table beside my head as he leans over me, his face inches from mine. He might be intending to kiss me again. Please.

Instead, after tugging down my opaque tights and briefs, he slides his fingers between my dripping folds to touch me, gently parting my lips and running his fingertips around the entrance to my vagina. It never occurs to me to protest. I think I might melt.

“Ah, honey, you are so wet, so ready for me,” he whispers, his eyes never leaving mine as he slips first one finger, then two inside me. I gasp and tilt my hips forward, parting my thighs instinctively to let him in. I can’t believe I’m doing this, that I’m letting him touch me like this.

“I want to fuck you. You know that, don’t you?” I can’t think of any sensible response to that apart from spreading my legs farther, but he apparently, incredibly, wants to talk! “Don’t you?” he repeats, sliding his fingers inside me to stretch and stroke the walls of my vagina. “Answer me, Miss Byrne.”

“Yes,” I manage to whisper, closing my eyes to savour the intense pleasure he is rekindling, the delicious helplessness as my body responds again, more powerfully still, to this even more intense stimulation.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, Miss Byrne.” His voice is still quiet, but an edge of firmness has crept in too. He slides his wonderful, clever fingers out of my vagina, right out until only the tips are still there, gently circling my entrance, so lightly that I can hardly feel him anymore, before he plunges them back inside me, hard and fast. “Do I have your attention, Miss Byrne?” he asks softly as I jerk under him.

“Am I hurting you?” His tone is low, gentle, the words whispered into my ear.

“No. No, that feels fabulous…”

“Mmmm, I think so too, Miss Byrne. You’re so hot and wet and tight, and I want to put my cock inside you, here…” A further deep and fast thrust with his fingers, to make sure I get his point. I do. I definitely do. “Deep and hard and fast, until you scream. I like it that you scream when I make you come. I want to fuck you until you can’t stand. With your permission, of course. Is that okay with you, Miss Byrne?”

God, yes, absolutely…

“Miss Byrne?” His insistent voice penetrates my pre-orgasmic haze. “I don’t think you’re listening to me. I said I want to fuck you, but only if you agree. Will you agree, Miss Byrne?”

“Yes.” Please.

“Ah, that’s good then. I’m going to fuck you hard and fast and deep, and then again, long and slow and easy. I want you under me, on top of me. I want to fuck you up against the wall, and I want to fuck you from behind, bent over a table like this one. I want you in lots of ways, Miss Byrne. There are so many things I want to do to you, and you’re going to love it. Well, most of it. I’m going to enjoy fucking you in every which way I want, Miss Byrne. Will that be all right with you?”

“Yes…” Almost oblivious to the crude words and wicked promises he is making, and between his fingers stroking me inside and outside, as he has now started to rub my clitoris with his thumb—oh, God, could this feel any better?—I am well beyond coherent thought. Certainly he’ll get no argument out of me.

Summer Jones likes things to be tidy. Predictable, well-ordered and meticulous—she likes to be in control. So when she finds herself waiting for a friend in a BDSM club, she is horrified when an attractive Dom offers to show her around. She agrees, but there’s a catch. Her sassy mouth has earned her a punishment at his hands. She has to accept his terms or spend the evening alone. Despite her apprehension, Summer can’t deny her curiosity about this lifestyle and the pleasures it seems to offer.

But will one night with accomplished Dom, Daniel Riche, fulfil her dreams, or will it just prove to her what she always suspected, that anything so intense is best avoided?

Scared, confused, and utterly horrified at her response to Daniel’s touch and his dark brand of pleasure, Summer still finds herself yearning for more. Why, despite her pleas and his obvious appreciation of her body, is he peculiarly reluctant to deliver all she demands from him?

Hurt and confused, Summer is desperate to escape. But can she leave her memories of Daniel behind? Does she really want to?

Reader Advisory: This book contains references to remembered scenes of dubious consent, prostitution and physical abuse.​

Publisher’s Note: This book is best read in sequence as part of a serial. Some of the characters in this book also appear in Ashe Barker’s other serials. These serials can all stand alone but are best enjoyed in order: The Dark Side, Sure Mastery, The Hardest Word, A Richness of Swallows.

Dan’s expression doesn’t alter. He stands back, rakes his eyes up and down me, from the top of my head to the tips of my now bare toes then back to meet my gaze again.

“Slender is more how I’d describe you. Willowy, perhaps.”

“But…my tits are too small,” I blurt out my biggest body self-image issue before I have a chance to stifle it. Perhaps just as well, as he doesn’t take kindly to filtered responses as far as I can see.

His attention is immediately riveted on the tits in question. “Too small for what?” His tone is polite, enquiring.

“What?”

“What is it that you think your tits are too small for? This?”

He reaches for me, cupping my right breast in his warm hand. He kneads the soft mound, caressing my not exactly ample curves. It feels good even so, and my impulse is to lean in and arch my back, offering my breast to him.

“This one seems to fit my hand perfectly. Let’s try something else.” Still stroking my right breast he takes my left nipple between the fingers of his other hand, tracing the outline slowly.

I gasp at the feather light, almost ticklish, sensation. He responds by firming his grip, squeezing the sensitive tip, pulling on it just a little. I hiss as the pain starts to bite, and he releases me.

“Your breasts are pretty, curvy, exceptionally sensitive. In fact, Miss Jones, I think we may need to come back to these when your spanking is out of the way, just to demonstrate to you how absolutely perfect your breasts are—or your tits, if you prefer. Now, over the bench again please.”

“But, I…”

“Still fishing for compliments, Miss Jones? And did I catch a ‘Sir’ just then?

“Sorry, Sir.” I waste no time in leaning over the bench, before my mouth gets me in more trouble.

Dan fastens the leather straps, securing my wrists to the feet of the apparatus, but he decides to leave my ankles free. It makes no difference. I’m not going anywhere.

I ponder how he can manage to make me feel both vulnerable and safe at the same time. And this is yet more untidiness which my dangerously out of control inner submissive manages to consign to the ‘not just now’ pile.

“So, we’re at twenty-five strokes. Agreed.”

“Yes, Sir.” No point objecting. Even in my limited experience, I realise this is not negotiable. I just hope he gets it done with quickly and isn’t too heavy-handed. I brace myself for the first slap.

When his palm does connect with my now upturned and conveniently placed buttock, it’s to massage my soft flesh. I tense under his hand, expecting a sudden burst of pain. It doesn’t come. Instead, he continues to caress me, paying particular attention to the swallows delicately etched into my skin.

“These really are beautiful. How long have you had them?”

“Two years, Sir.”

“What made you decide to get tattooed? It doesn’t seem ‘you’, somehow.”

I start to tell him I’m not sure, but manage to stop myself in time. Automatic responses won’t do and right at this moment, in this position, naked and draped over a spanking bench, I have no intention of exacerbating matters if I can help it. So I stop and I think, and I try to remember what was in my head the day I wandered into the body art salon in Bristol, soon after I arrived there to start work at the library.

“I was tired of being bland. I wanted to make a statement—something personal, something about me. My identity. So it was about my name. Summer. In my mind that linked to swallows, as I said earlier, so I chose them. A sort of symbol for me or for what I wanted to become.”

“They’re in a straight line, perfectly symmetrical. Is that intentional too?”

The question, so casual, so artlessly dropped into the conversation, but so crucial. His accuracy is unerring. He continues to stroke my buttocks as I battle with myself over what, how much, to say. In the end, though, I know I have no alternative but to tell him the truth.

“Yes. I like things to be in straight lines, symmetrical. Tidy and ordered.”

“Does that go for you too, Summer? You said these birds symbolise you. Or at least that’s what I thought you were saying.”

“Yes. I did. They do. Usually.”

“Usually?”

“Well, not now, obviously.”

“Oh?”

He wants more, expects more. And there is a whole lot more. But I can’t. I really can’t share my innermost fears and insecurities when I’m poised over a spanking bench.

“Please, Sir. I will explain—I promise. I want to, really I do, But not here, not now, like this. It’s too…personal.”

“A spanking is personal. Or at least, this one will be.”

“Please, Sir, I just can’t. Don’t…”

He chuckles, the sound warm though, not in the least unkind. “It never fails to amaze me, Miss Jones, how forthcoming submissives tend to become when their arse is on the line. Literally. Okay, we’ll come back to this. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Sir. I think I am.” My relief is enormous. I seem to be getting let off the hook. For now, at least.

“We’ll soon know. Do you remember your safe word?”

“Yes. Red means stop.”

“Red means stop, Sir. I can appreciate you’re under stress right now, so I won’t add any extra slaps for that, but be careful. I’m not known for my leniency. Count the slaps, please. I’ll spank, you count. You stop counting, I stop. That way, if you faint, I’ll know.”

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